


invoke

by douchechill



Series: Daterra Sweet [2]
Category: Manhattan Love Story, Unubore Deka
Genre: M/M, One-Sided Attraction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-02
Updated: 2017-11-02
Packaged: 2019-01-28 10:40:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12604748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/douchechill/pseuds/douchechill
Summary: Tenchou tries to deal with the aftermath of being confessed to.





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Tenchou can’t focus.

New customers flit into Manhattan as usual, making their orders, and Tenchou is grateful every time they do, but whenever he’s finished brewing a cup or cooking a plate of neapolitan pasta or (dare he admit it) heating a Curry Dojo pouch, he becomes all too aware of the pair of eyes that’ve been watching him since they’d come in.

The back of his neck prickles with heat. It’s embarrassing to be watched so closely. Tenchou turns his head some degrees to see if he’s still being watched, and the sight of the grey-wearing detective still smiling at him from his place on the bar makes his shirt collar feel like a noose.

“Master,” the detective says, smiling, and Tenchou’s heart jumps for reasons he can’t explain. “Another cup of your signature blend, please.”

That is to say, the detective’s already drank two cups since coming in. Tenchou’s sure it must be a health hazard having that much caffeine in your body, but he bows all the same and works on another serving. As focused as he is on the coffee, however, he doesn’t miss the sound of the detective sighing, and it makes him wonder what in the world he could be sighing _about_. Tenchou spares another glance, but all he gets is another perfect view of the detective watching him and smiling, and once more he feels his face fill with heat before he dips his head away.

He can’t compute it. The detective looks like a fool. Or, rather, is he even a real detective?

“You know–” Shinobu’s voice cuts into Tenchou’s thoughts as she comes behind him, hands full with drying coffee cups. “–Mr. Detective just confessed to you, Tenchou. Shouldn’t you be giving him a reply?”

Tenchou nearly spills the hot water in the kettle onto his shoe when he jumps. Frowning hard, he turns to fix Shinobu with a glare, but all she does is pout a bit and jerk her head in the direction of the detective who’s yet to move an inch. “You owe him a reply,” she says, sounding the slightest bit cross, and that more than anything makes Tenchou’s stomach clench with guilt.

Oh, he certainly remembers when Shinobu was in love with him. He remembers leaving Manhattan without giving her a reply. He remembers everything–the hardship and the pain–and on that note, understands why it is Shinobu’s so insistent he give the dreamy-eyed man a reply. While it makes him feel bad to recall how much he put her through, however, this detective is another story entirely.

Tenchou doesn’t even know who he is!

Shinobu gives him one last, stern look (Tenchou can’t believe how motherly she is in that moment, how much she makes him feel guilty for even existing) before starting to cook a batch of neapolitan. Tenchou considers catching her attention again, but she seems too mad to do anything but ignore him.

He sighs, setting ground beans atop a paper filter and pouring hot water over them. It wouldn’t do anyone any good if Shinobu were mad at him, so Tenchou supposes he can swallow his uncertainty for her. At the very least, rejecting the detective would keep him from assuming anything untrue.

When he sets the saucer and cup down in front of him, the detective’s expression brightens even more. The simple smile turns into a grin, his eyes filled with sparkling glitter, and Tenchou startles because he hadn’t seen that coming. Third cup of coffee or not, for someone to be so happy around him is beyond his comprehension.

“Do take your time,” Tenchou mumbles on habit.

The detective swoons a little, his hand resting on his cheek and his face turning pink, and Tenchou’s heart flutters at the sight of him.

“Master,” he coos, “you have the nicest voice.”

Flustered, Tenchou’s chest goes tight with feeling again, and he gives a quick bow before rushing away to his station. It seems no matter how much Shinobu pushes him, it’ll be a lot harder to talk to this detective than he thought.

* * *

The detective stayed until closing time and then some. As Tenchou cleaned the store and caught glances outside the cafe window, he could see the shape of the detective watching, dreamy and stupefied and just as in love as when he was seated at the bar.

Now, though, he’s finished all his cleaning and all the lights in Manhattan are off. He steels himself in preparation for seeing that goofy gaze once more, but when Tenchou peers outside he sees the detective finally driving away. Some feeling rises up in his chest; ultimately, however, Tenchou heaves a little sigh of relief before shaking his head from side to side.

He turns the light behind the bar on to prepare the blend for tomorrow. As shocking and overwhelming as today might have been, and as much as Tenchou was outside of his comfort zone, it always feels nice to do something familiar again, and he relishes the portioning of various beans to fill his little jar.

Many people like to believe that Tenchou puts the same types of beans together for his signature blend everyday, but they’d be sorely mistaken. While most cafes tend to stick to one recipe, Tenchou has seven–one for each day of the week–both for the sake of his customers having a new experience and so every bean he imports doesn’t go to waste.

Today’s blend was a mixture of Indonesian and Ethiopian beans: a half-and-half of Harar and Sumatra brought to a full city roast. It’s more aggressive than Tenchou’s other blends, given its deeper and fuller body and the earthiness in its bass notes, but the roast makes it bittersweet. It cancels out the acidity of the Harar beans nicely, and with some few, careful drops of milk, creates a coffee that breathes natural without the horrid aftertaste.

For tomorrow, Tenchou supposes he’ll go for a Melange blend, so he prepares his Colombian beans and his Kenya beans to roast separately.

He goes with Colombian first, taking the beans over to the back to start his roasting.

It’s a regular, habitual thing, so much so that Tenchou doesn’t have to worry too much about screwing up. He’s done this millions of times–and that’s why it’s unfortunate that as much as he’d like to focus on his coffee, he finds his thoughts wandering towards the detective who came in earlier instead. Against his better judgement, he feels that incredible leap in his chest once more, and he frowns as he watches his beans roast before him.

Who was he, anyway? And why did he come _here_? And how could he have fallen for Tenchou like that? There’s no such thing as love at first sight–Tenchou learned that the hard way when his little affections for Akabane faded into friendship–and as far as he’s concerned, the detective’d never been to Manhattan _before_.

He’s a man of calibre; he wouldn’t forget any of the faces of any of his customers, no doubt about it. And to forget someone as stupidly handsome-looking as the detective that walked in–

_Ah._  Tenchou shakes his head vigorously, frowning deeper. No, he mustn’t think of him as handsome. He’s going to reject him tomorrow, after all.

But what’s the harm of thinking someone handsome? Tenchou considers this silently, the aroma of fresh coffee tickling his nostrils just above his moustache. People can consider other people good-looking aesthetically, without any bias. Like a painting or something. Like looking at a photograph of Atsuro Watabe. Like watching a sunset.

The detective is like the sunset?

Maybe Tenchou can keep that his little secret.

So he locks the thought away.

In any case, tomorrow he’ll have to make it clear that he doesn’t have any romantic intentions to pursue with a total stranger. Tenchou decides this with a determined nod of his head before removing the Colombian beans and moving on to the Kenya. There’s no sense in leading someone on–this he learned from his experience with Akabane–and besides, if he had to crush the detective’s dreams, it’d be best to do it while those dreams were still tiny.

Yes. The detective is a stranger, Tenchou doesn’t know him, and therefore he has no moral obligation to care.

Yes.

_Yes!_

* * *

The detective has drawn a picture of him.

Tenchou stares down at the offered sketchpad, his head tilting to the side.

He’s been captured in graphite pencil; if he were to judge it from the darkness of the strokes, he’d have to say it was a 2B pencil in particular. Regardless, Tenchou looks as he always does when he stands behind the bar–tall, proud, and the picture of manliness, and he has to admit that the detective must have some artistic talent, even if he’s lacking somewhat in the logical part of his brain.

“Do you like it?” the detective asks him, excitement clear in his voice. “I couldn’t stop thinking about you… I had to draw. I thought, you know, after watching you all day…” The detective looks away, his lips forming some combination of a smile and a contemplative purse, and out of nowhere looks back at Tenchou with wide eyes. “I could capture you in some degree?”

Tenchou doesn’t understand why it’s phrased as a question. He blinks, but the detective looks pleased with himself, like he just said something really cool just now. Honestly, though, all that’s cool about him so far is that he can draw–and even then, the fact that he had to stare at Tenchou all day yesterday to do it just makes it more creepy than flattering.

But the detective gives him the picture anyway, grinning like a fool. “You can have it, Master. I can just draw more of you when I’m lonely.”

Isn’t that creepy, too?

Tenchou bows, though, and he excuses himself to head to the staff room and set the drawing somewhere on the shelves. It rests nicely on top of some boxes of wafers… and is a little unsettling, actually, because it looks like the drawing’s staring at him, so Tenchou flips it over to hide it from the world.

Nice drawing or not, he has to reject that confession of love.

When he steps out of the break room, he sees the detective perk up, eyes bright and posture straightening like a dog. The detective smiles at him, shining like the sun once more, and seeing that happiness, seeing the tender love in his eyes, makes Tenchou’s knees go weak. It’s an inexplicable reaction–one he can’t justify himself–and his stomach clenches because he’s so out of his depth he doesn’t know how to take it.

Tenchou sighs to himself, coming to terms with the inevitability of it all, and goes back to his customer to take his order. The detective asks for the signature blend as usual, looking so excited to speak with him, so Tenchou makes him one cup of it, using the excuse of the routine to give himself some time to think.

Maybe he can’t reject him after all.

Why is it different from when Shinobu confessed to him? Or all the other times he saw everyone confess to everyone else in this very cafe? Tenchou can’t put his finger on the reason, but then again, he’s never been all too concerned with affairs of the heart to begin with.

There’s just something different about the way the detective looks at him, he decides. Something that stands out, something out of the norm. And it’s not the fact that he’s in love with him; certainly, that makes his gaze difficult to meet, but it isn’t the main reason for it.

Tenchou’s seen the way people in love look at each other–has seen it in the eyes of all his friends who come to visit the cafe. But none of them ever look as earnest as this detective does, as permanent, as out of the constructs of temporal reality.

Strange, to feel like he’s been accepted wholly by someone he doesn’t even know. Strange, to feel like someone loves him as he is without any hope for more.

As he glances at the detective out of the corner of his eye he can see that same loving look–eternal and never changing–and while it confuses him, Tenchou almost feels like a better person for deserving it.

He serves the detective his coffee.

This time, he decides, he’ll watch him back. It might be uncomfortable to acknowledge the detective’s existence knowing he loves him, and it might make him sweat a little under the collar too, but it’s the least he can do for the man he can’t reject outright. He owes him that much.

So Tenchou considers the way the detective picks the cup up–so dainty and careful in his big hands–and considers the way he gets a whiff of it. He watches him take a drink, sees the bob of his Adam’s apple, and catches the way the detective’s lips slowly pull away from the rim, soft and gentle. It’s an uncharacteristically graceful thing; Tenchou thought the detective was more like a gorilla than anything else. But as he sets the cup back down onto the saucer, his expression softens into a smile: content, happy, and looking for all the world like he’s honoured to have been able to get a taste of Tenchou’s brew, and for a moment, Tenchou thinks he understands what it means to want to draw someone.

“It was delicious, Master,” the detective tells him, voice sweet as sugar and eyes molten chocolate. “Colombian and Kenya today, huh? You must’ve worked really hard to roast them perfectly–it was _amazing_.”

Tenchou’s throat dries when he bows graciously. It dries even more when standing up straight shows him the detective’s gone back to looking at him with lovesick eyes.

Nobody’s cracked his blends before.

How is he supposed to break this man’s heart?

* * *

The detective comes as often as he can as soon as he finishes work, provided cases don’t keep him busy. Sometimes he brings his partner with him, an unpleasant man named Saeki who Tenchou could care less about, but for the most part, he comes alone and stays until closing time.

Sometimes he does nothing but drink coffee. Sometimes he orders neapolitan, probably when he’s feeling hungry, but he seems to only do that when Shinobu’s around to cook it. Sometimes he comes in too late for Tenchou to make him a new cup before closing time, but it doesn’t seem to deter him from staying, even if the staying only lasts five minutes. No matter the circumstance, however, Tenchou lets him in.

Shinobu reminds him every so often to have a real talk with the detective, to tell him the truth about how he feels. More often than not she says, “It’s not good to string someone along, Tenchou!”, and it’s not like Tenchou can argue against her. But in some strange way, he’s come to look forward to the detective’s visits, even though all he ever does is sit down and stare at him. He’s gotten used to hearing the detective’s voice telling him his coffee is delicious, and he’s gotten used to seeing that happy smile on his face even when Tenchou hasn’t done anything impressive. Most importantly, he’s gotten used to making him drinks, and to give someone a cup of perfect, hot coffee as it should be tasted is why Tenchou started this entire venture to begin with.

He doesn’t love him back. The very notion of it sounds absurd even in Tenchou’s head. Familiar presence or not, the detective is still a stranger.

Part of him, however, no matter how small and insignificant, wants to talk to the man who comes to Manhattan everyday–who can taste all the beans in his blends without fail. In fact, sometimes Tenchou imagines doing it, asking the detective, “What beans do you like best for your coffee?”

But of course, in the same way he couldn’t reject him, he can’t bring himself to ask that, either. All Tenchou can hope for is that one day the detective tells him, himself.

* * *

One day, Tenchou catches himself lining beans up on the counter. He frowns as he looks down at the four of them spaced evenly apart, lying inanimate and unsuspecting on shining brown wood but full of unspoken weight.

There are four beans for the four days the detective’s been out. It’s been four days since he’s seen him.

His stomach twists. It’s none of his business.

His hands feel clammy. It’s _none_ of his _business_.

Tenchou shakes his head, putting the beans back into their jar.

He decides to keep that his little secret.


End file.
